[NLA] Where do reading problems go?

[Sioux Falls Area Literacy Council]

A bit of a Footnote, if you will, to Catherine King's comments about Tom
Sticht's email message:

The question of researchers *appears* to be how "Adults Perceive Their
Reading Skills".
According to Tom, researchers are using the following, as detailed in this
paragraph in his message:

"> > But it is one thing to use standardized tests to judge the reading
> > skills of adults and still another to ask those same adults how well
> > they read the English language. The question is, do the nation's adults
> > think they have a reading problem? >>"

So we ask an adult how well can you read -- do you have a reading problem?
And the Footnote is:
"Compared to WHAT??"

If you grew up in a family where next to none of the adults who came from
that family could read fluently, what would you use as a role model for
"reading the English language well"?  Would it be the scholar who lives in a
different neighborhood and moves in different circles, both scholastically,
class-wise and in friendships?  No.

And if you as a kid didn't succeed in taking the school's standardized tests
because of your lack of ability to thrive in a timed testing environment or
you had a limited sight vocabulary or ability to break-down words to make
sense of  multiple choice answers, what do you suppose that standardized
test is going to show for results about that kid?  A low level of literacy
skills?  Heck!  "The System" already knew that -- that is, if we are a good
teacher and/or administrator in the kid's educational program!

Nancy Hansen
Sioux Falls Area Literacy Council
sfliteracy at mcleodusa.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Catherine King" <cb.king at verizon.net>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: [NLA] Where do reading problems go?


> Hello Tom:
>
> Researchers' understanding of the "cultural and
> sub-cultural phenomena with regard to the differences
> between adults' measured literacy abilities and their self-
> perceptions of their literacy abilities," will more likely
> come from two developments on the part of researchers:
>
> (1) the development and use of qualitative-investigative
> methods referred to in "Research Methods in Education
> and Psychology" (Mertons, l998, Sage Publications) as
> two other research paradigms, namely, "interpretive-
> constructivist" and/or "emancipatory" coupled with
> the relevant statistical data that comes from the
> quantitative, "post-positivist" paradigm.   These two
> paradigms emerged, as you probably know, from the
> recognition of the gross inadequacies of only using
> post-positivist methods on human data to understand
> human phenomena.
>
> (2) the fairly new notion, and now becoming systematic,
> that the researcher must always do a thorough self-
> inspection with the help of peers of every stripe to
> identify point-of-view biases and omissions that will
> show up in our methods, our questions, and the
> conceptual development of both.  This includes our
> expectations of the data and the development of
> testing material.  In a word, we need to do quite a
> bit of foundational work in order to come up with
> adequate testing materials.
>
> The new developing standard is one that must
> include the foundational realization of many views
> with many equally-valuable standards where
> communications are central and group-specific.
>
> There is, of course, the larger group we all belong to,
> and therefore a need for a "cash language" (which means
> more than "cash" but also theory, the law, news, institutional
> communications, etc.), and all adults need to know this to
> be participatory.  We all could stand development in this
> regard.   But there is always a dynamic relationship
> between this one-group and multiple-"sub"group
> communications which is enriching and/or debilitating,
> if communications is our goal on either count.
>
> However, standardized, quantitative, post-positivist
> measures often "default" back to this one standard as
> the only standard, as if human beings were objects of
> natural science instead of human like the researcher,
> while overlooking or denigrating group standards where
> internal communications work quite well, and have
> developed for more than mere "reasons of ignorance."
> In many cases, these communications actually serve to
> define and qualify specific historic groups in our
> culture and in others outside the USA.
>
> A consideration of the above  may help to explain why:
>
> ". . . two sub-cultural groups may both rate themselves as
> equally competent in terms of their self-perceived reading
> abilities, even though their measured competence may
> differ as much as a full standard deviation on standardized
> literacy tests. This suggests an adaptive function within
> each sub-cultural group to the ambient literacy abilities and
> demands of each sub-group as its members encounter
> and perceive them."
>
> Perhaps our tests don't measure the reality either in their
> (1) methods, (2) their content, or (3) researcher's
> assumptions, either politically, socially, psychologically or
> philosophically on  many grounds and especially in terms
> of what it means to be "literate."   Perhaps if we
> asked our students about communications instead of
> "literacy" and gave them adequate distinguishing test data,
> for example, we might come up with a better understanding
> about what is happening with our adults, including ourselves,
> and how they/we view ourselves.
>
> As with most tests, these will themselves be educative tools
> by waiting for and raising questions we may not have asked
> ourselves before--a developing tenet of the emancipatory
> research paradigm noted above.
>
> Good luck with your studies.  As always, I appreciate your
> insights and input to this forum.
>
> Catherine King
> Adjunct Faculty
> Department of Education
> National University
> San Diego,
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Thomas Sticht <tsticht at aznet.net>
> To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
> Cc: <tsticht at aznet.net>
> Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 9:12 AM
> Subject: [NLA] Where do reading problems go?
>
>
> > Research Note       March 2, 2002
> > Tom Sticht
> >
> > Where does the reading problem go when children grow up?
> >
> > If America's public schools aren't doing a good job of teaching reading,
> > you wouldn't know it by asking adults how well they read. That's because
> > the overwhelming majority of  our nation's adults 16-59 years of age
> > think they read Well or Very Well.
> >
> > Reading President Bush's strategic plan for education in the United
> > States, one might get the impression that we need to spend billions of
> > dollars more on teaching children to read better because the United
> > States faces a serious reading problem with millions of children who
> > will grow up to become adults with poor reading abilities.
> >
> > This impression is constantly being reinforced by various national and
> > international surveys in which the reading skills of youth and adults
> > are assessed using standardized tests. Based on a set of more or less
> > arbitrary rules, test developers typically  create reading or literacy
> > "levels" on these standardized tests and then end up declaring millions
> > of adults as of "low literacy" or just "mediocre" compared to those in
> > other industrialized nations. Such data are then used by education
> > advocates, or by policy makers such as the President of the United
> > States,  to call for increases in educational funding to increase the
> > reading skills of America's children so that when they grow up the
> > nation will have an adult population with better reading abilities.
> >
> > Adult's Perceptions of Their Reading Skills
> >
> > But it is one thing to use standardized tests to judge the reading
> > skills of adults and still another to ask those same adults how well
> > they read the English language. The question is, do the nation's adults
> > think they have a reading problem?
> >
> > The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) asked adults to rate
> > their own reading skills as they perceived them. In a report on the
> > Literacy of Older Adults in America, from the National Center for
> > Education Statistics in Washington, DC, November 1996, the authors
> > reported (p. 43) that  adults aged 16 to 59 rated themselves as reading
> > Very Well-72%, Well-22% and Not Well/Not At All-7%. Overall, then, some
> > 93% of adults in this age range rated themselves as reading Well or Very
> > Well.
> >
> > When broken out by ethnic groups, ratings were found of
> >
> > Whites: Very Well-77%, Well-21%, or Not Well/Not At All-3%.
> > Blacks:  Very Well-67%, Well-27% and Not Well/Not At All-6%.
> > Hispanics: Very Well-46%, Well-22% and Not Well/Not At All-32%
> >
> > In this analysis, only Hispanics reported a high percentage, 32 percent,
> > or 5.3 million adults,  who thought they could not read English Well or
> > Very Well, no doubt reflecting the large immigrant population in this
> > category with less education and poorer English language skills than U.
> > S. born adults. Among both Blacks and Whites, poor reading appears to be
> > a perceived problem for only 3 to 6 percent of these populations, about
> > 4.5 million adults in the age range 16-59.
> >
> > International Comparisons
> >
> > Another way that has been tired to find out if the U.S. has an adult
> > reading problem that needs to be addressed is to take 20 of the highest
> > income, richest nations on earth, give the adults a literacy test,  and
> > then find out how well the U.S. does. If the average for adults in the
> > U.S. falls well below the average for these nations then this might
> > indicate a significant degree of reading problems. If the U.S. is as
> > good as or better than the average of these developed, high income
> > nations, then that might suggest that the U.S. does not have a reading
> > problem of crisis proportions.
> >
> > In an Educational Testing Service report entitled "The Twin Challenges
> > of Mediocrity and Inequality. Literacy in the U.S. from an International
> > Perspective", released February 2002, the authors used data from the
> > International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and did the comparisons
> > listed above. They reported that, for a composite score made up of the
> > IALS Prose, Document, and Quantitative literacy scales combined, the U.
> > S. scored 2 points above the average composite score for 20 of the
> > richest nations on earth and ranked number 12 out of 20 on the composite
> > score. Comparing U. S. men and women separately to  17 high income
> > nations the men were not different from the 17 nation average and ranked
> > 12 out of 17,  while the U.S. women scored 5 points above the 17 nation
> > average and ranked 9th in average literacy among these high income,
> > industrialized nations.
> >
> > Even more telling is the finding that on the Prose literacy scale, at
> > the 50th  percentile the
> > average U. S. adult literacy score ranked number 8 out of 21 high income
> > nations, while at the 70th and 80th percentiles it ranked number 4 and
> > at the 85th and 90th  percentiles it  ranked number 3. Similar shifts
> > toward the higher rankings at the higher percentiles were found with the
> > Document and Quantitative literacy scales, though not so dramatic.
> >
> > At the lower percentile levels, the U.S. adults tended to score somewhat
> > below the average scores of the 21 nations on the three literacy scales,
> > though typically the U. S. scores were not statistically significantly
> > different from the average scores for other nations at points below the
> > 50th percentile on the three scales. The U. S. rankings below the 50th
> > percentile ranged from 12th to 19th out of 21 at the low end of the
> > percentile distribution.
> >
> > Further, as measured by a composite of the Prose, Document, and
> > Quantitative literacy scales on the IALS, at the higher levels of
> > literacy, that is the 80th, 85th, and 90th  percentiles the U. S. is in
> > the top 3 to 5 ranks of 17 industrialized nations in terms of adult
> > literacy proficiency.  So while we're not winning any gold medals, we
> > get a few bronze medals for third place in the Olympics of adult
> > literacy among the most highly developed, wealthiest nations on earth.
> >
> > Cultural niches for literacy
> >
> > As indicated above, using their own judgments of their reading
> > abilities, over 93 percent of America's adults do not think they have a
> > reading problem. Using comparisons of average scores on the standardized
> > tests of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the
> > U. S. is on par with most of the industrialized, knowledge-based,
> > highest income nations on earth. This is like being an average or
> > "mediocre" athlete in the small pool of world athletes who qualify for
> > the Olympics. Further, if the "gold" is power and wealth that these
> > nations are vying for,  the U. S. already ranks as the most powerful and
> > richest nation on earth. It would seem to be a hard sell to use these
> > data to plea for more money for teaching adults to read better.
> >
> > Perhaps when children grow up and get out in the post-K-12 world they
> > adapt to the ambient literacy demands of a cultural niche that they find
> > possible to occupy. They find jobs they can qualify for, they get
> > information from sources they have access to and feel comfortable in
> > using, and as they slip ever more firmly into their literacy niche, they
> > feel more and more satisfaction with their literacy skills.  Perhaps
> > this is why so many U.S. adults think they read Well or Very Well.
> >
> > In turn, this may be one reason so few adults show up in adult literacy
> > programs and why such programs have come to serve more and more those
> > adults who are not native English speakers and did not progress through
> > the U. S. schools as poor readers. As indicated above, more Hispanics
> > perceive themselves to be lacking in reading English, and so it is not
> > too surprising that Hispanics and other non-English speaking immigrants
> > show up in larger  numbers for adult English language and literacy
> > programs.  It seems likely that many immigrants are actively seeking to
> > find a cultural niche in the U. S. in which they feel they can meet some
> > of their most pressing needs.
> >
> > The concept of the cultural niche can be expanded into the idea of
> > broader sub-cultures with differing perceptions of their literacy
> > abilities. For instance, when the average proficiencies of Whites and
> > Blacks on the NALS Prose scale were compared, it was found that for
> > Whites who rated themselves as reading Very Well, their average Prose
> > proficiency was 308, well into Literacy Level 3, whereas for Blacks
> > rating themselves as reading Very Well, their Prose average proficiency
> > was 259, in the middle of NALS Literacy Level 2. On the Quantitative
> > scale, Whites rating themselves as reading Well scored 278 on the NALS ,
> > placing them just inside Level 3, while Blacks who rated themselves as
> > reading Well scored 221, at the high end of Level 1, the lowest literacy
> > level on the NALS.
> >
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